


Living Legend

by inelegantly (Lir)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Crossroads, Difficult Decisions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fate & Destiny, Friendship, Gen, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/inelegantly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Before him, three great beasts stand proudly. Their eyes are bright in the gloom as they stare him down, flickers like lightning crackling over one of their coats, and sparks of fire from another, providing inconsistent illumination."</i>
</p>
<p>AJ comes to a crossroads in his pokemon journey, where he must look legendary gods and sobering powers in their faces before making his own final decisions. There are voices in his ears and a weight on his shoulders, and sometimes a boy just needs a break from a quest that feels larger than himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Legend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vtn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/gifts).



> What really called out to me in the dear author letter was the mention of worldbuilding, found families, and "us against the world" setups as general likes. I wanted to take those things, add a little Burrito hurt/comfort (if in a different vein than the one suggested), and mix them all together at one of the let's play's climactic points. VTN, I hope you enjoy this!

-

The Tin Tower is dim inside, lit primarily by the meager sunlight that sometimes filters through the ancient building's high, narrow windows. Outside, evening has fallen, leaving both the forest and the tower to descend into a shadow-smudged twilight. In the wake of battle everything is calm and quiet. 

Whispers of voices still breathe into AJ's ears, burrow directly into his head with their perverse guidance and their constant, maddening insistence that he heed their incomprehensible wisdom. For the moment, he is able to ignore them. Before him, three great beasts stand proudly. Their eyes are bright in the gloom as they stare him down, flickers like lightning crackling over one of their coats, and sparks of fire from another, providing inconsistent illumination. 

They judge him, with their unflinching stares, and promptly depart. 

AJ and suicune are left alone. His hand goes to his belt out of reflex, fingering along the six pokeballs buckled safe and close. The voices still whisper, their murmurs a call to battle. Suicune leaps over the rail in a flash of blue, and the fight is joined. 

The voices are a constant roar in his ears, a tumultuous thunder that only grows as he struggles to lead his pokemon through the offense. He's so weary. Victory Road has taken its toll on his stamina, with its long, dark corridors and endless trials. It's a test of his endurance and resolve. He thought he'd been tested to the sheerest extent of those limits already with the way his unearthly guides croon to him, but he's discovering there is always a new trial to withstand.

Tin Tower is soothing in comparison. The warmth of the wood paneling is a welcome respite from cold stone and uncertain danger, even in the face of a hostile living legend. With a toss of suicune's heavy head, thick clouds form just beneath the ceiling and a torrential rainstorm pours down inside the building. Brian is drenched within seconds, the pidgeot's wings streaming water as he spreads them once, twice, trying to shake the rain off of him. 

He looks to AJ, sharp eyes intelligent and trusting, and AJ can only think – this is the power of a god. 

In his ears and inside his head the murmuring roars louder, so he can't be certain whether it's the voices or the pounding of the rain he hears. It could be either, for all the good listening does him. His hand falls to his waist, uncertain, even as Brian stares up at him with an expectant gaze. He no longer knows what move will do right by his pokemon.

He calls Brian back, and sends his feraligatr into the fray instead. Lazorgator's intimidating bulk is a blockade for him to stand behind, shielding AJ from the worst of the downpour. His pokemon gives his steady rumble of a cry to battle, and AJ smiles up at him. 

Lazorgator has been with him since the beginning, since the voices of the unknown first wormed their way into his mind. There are whims of higher powers at work, but he need not be their tool. He will prove himself in spite of them, and make his own destiny. When feraligatr drags the mighty suicune into the spin of a whirlpool within the howling curtain of rain, AJ only grins all the wider. 

No gods. No mighty powers. No tyrants will he suffer. 

With the voices shouting loud, he shouts for his pokemon to surf, and surf again, drowning the beast of water in an end even he can judge as fitting. 

The rains quiet as suicune collapses. The wood-paneled floor is flooded with brackish water, but it washes out as the door behind AJ creaks open. He ignores it, recalling Lazorgator to the safety of his ball. He's still drenched and wind-swept, standing alone, victorious, in the center of the tower's floor. 

The sages and Eusine crowd around him, congratulate them. AJ tunes their words out. They're just more voices, more strangers telling him what to do and what to think, bombarding him with information that he doesn't want to hear. He stands before them like his feraligatr before suicune's storm, weathering their words with that exact same determination. There are wise things he can learn from his pokemon. 

When everyone is finished, AJ wordlessly walks out. 

-

AJ is still damp and dripping as he marches down route 30. He's shivering, but he hardly feels it. The night air is brisk, and the occasional breeze only serves to aid in drying him. Suicune's image remains imprinted on his mind's eye, particularly at that final moment, as the great beast swayed on its feet before the force of feraligatr's surf brought it toppling at last to the ground. 

There are more tyrants still for AJ to bring down; making the difficult decision to end suicune has done nothing save solidify his resolve. 

The voices only murmur and mumble as he walks, the recession of their demands leaving AJ to better feel the weariness even then settling deeper into his bones. He's determined, but so tired. He knows it shows, to his mothers on the rare instances when he makes it home, to his friends made along the way in the course of his journey. They call often, and AJ knows they worry about him. 

They can't see the purpose he's been bent toward. They can't understand that he doesn't have time for their idle chatter, not for Wade's nattering about difficulties with his caterpie, not for Alan and his babbling about his prized tangela. Joey calls him the most often, always bright with enthusiasm and happy to catch AJ's listening ear. He knows he's done nothing to earn his friends' devotion and concern. 

He knows he shouldn't have thrown Joey's number away that one time recently, in a fit of voices-induced rage, or self-pity, or some other nameless feeling – he can no longer remember quite what emotion he'd felt at the time. 

It's route 30 he walks along, and it's only as he turns a particular corner past a familiar stretch of trees that he realizes where the voices' insidious murmurs have led him. Joey waits right ahead, standing casually on the path as the night grows close around him, his rattata performing tackles against a nearby tree. All of AJ's anger and purpose still hovers about him like a koffing's toxic cloud, but some small measure of his tension drains out of his shoulders. He chalks it up to the sight of Joey's infectious grin. 

His friend shouts to him, as soon as AJ draws near enough for Joey to get a good line of sight.

"I've been waiting!" is what he exclaims, staring AJ down like he wants some explanation for that.

AJ can only shrug, having no excuse for his delay, nor for his fickle moment of rejection when he'd deleted Joey's number. He's hot and cold, sometimes, but he only feels cold inside now. Resolute. It's lonely, and he finds he doesn't want to be alone. 

"Let's battle now!" Joey insists, not taking any nonsense. 

AJ supposes that's what he likes about the guy. Joey might be simple, but he's so clear-sighted. He knows exactly what he wants at all times, and makes no hesitation about going for it. AJ's fingers go to his belt as he flashes his friend a somewhat lukewarm grin. In an instant, pigeot's pokeball is pulled free, and he tosses it into the air. Brian bursts from it, spreading his wings wide and snapping them once, shedding a shower of water droplets to fall onto the grass below. 

"That's more like it," Joey says, as his rattata dutifully trots out in front of him. 

Rattata is just like his trainer: stubborn and good-natured. Even with his powerful fangs barred at the so-called enemy, his eyes are bright, and it looks almost as if the small rodent is grinning. 

Watching them, watching the way the small pokemon and small boy are wearing those identical eager looks, warms AJ up inside even as the voices whisper to him confusing seductions. Brian settles to the grass, wings flicking one last time to rid themselves of the last of the water before settling against the bird pokemon's back. Even AJ's especially humble pidgeot has his point of pride, and he snaps his beak in a challenge toward rattata. 

Joey's rattata only stands his ground, not about to risk an unwise move when facing off against a pidgeot fast enough to savage him in a second. Rattata is so small. AJ watches him, and for once, the crushing weight of external expectations doesn't immediately loom over him at the mere onset of battle. 

Facing off against Joey is a port in the storm. 

AJ fingers the balls along his belt, as Brian cocks his head and chirrups another disdaining challenge to the rattata. He's always so patient when the voices mire his trainer in indecision. He's patient still when AJ recalls him. He tosses up another pokeball, and this time espeon emerges onto the field. 

Burrito gives a joyous scree, joining battle with the same unwavering love for life he expresses about all things. He's light on his feet, taking a few padding steps forward with his tail swaying in the air, giving rattata a curious once-over and immediately sizing up the situation. 

AJ should be giving him an order – he is the trainer, after all. 

But it's so rare that he has a moment so free of the voices' constant whispering, reduced now to a distant murmuring into his inner ear. The stakes are low here. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, AJ can afford to do as he wishes, with little worry for destiny or fate or the larger implications of his every move that the voices cause him to feel whether he'd like to or not. 

Burrito picks his way across the grass, his bright eyes focused on rattata. Despite that, his little paws carry him slowly closer to AJ. When he gives a whip of his tail, a precursor to the offense he has yet to bring, he's at most a foot from AJ's legs. He winds himself in between them, rubbing against his trainer and butting his head against AJ's knee. It takes AJ a moment to realize his pokemon is comforting him. 

His pokemon is concerned for him. 

Burrito darts back into the fray just in time to keep rattata's attack away from his trainer. AJ shakes his head, gives the order for espeon to savage his opponent's rattata with a bite. One chomp is all it takes. 

Joey recalls rattata, defeated but not disheartened. The momentary disappointment on his face is quickly replaced with a bright smile, slightly forced but somehow still genuine. He always took losing like a champ. 

"Ack," he says, making this little coughing sound in his throat. "I guess I lost to you again." 

AJ shrugs, an implicit apology that the half-smile hovering around his lips doesn't at all help to sell. He's been tried so fiercely; there are some battles he simply cannot relax himself enough to lose. 

He means to recall Burrito to his pokeball. Burrito is having no part of that. AJ's espeon pads right up to Joey, bumping himself against the other boy's legs and rubbing his cheek against Joey's thigh until he has no choice save to reach down and pet the insisting pokemon. 

"He likes you," AJ says, still fingering the pokeball he'd meant to recall Burrito into. 

"I thought you liked me, too!" Joey says. 

It's probably a joke, not really an accusation. AJ shrugs again, flustered in spite of himself. He remembers anew that he'd deleted Joey's number, and for a moment he feels bad about it. 

"We're never going to be as strong as you guys," Joey continues, not waiting for a real answer. "I guess it just comes from not getting out and seeing the rest of the world. I want to stay here and make my rattata the best rattata he can be. And you always come to battle, don't you?" 

"I try," AJ says. 

He does do that. He isn't always the most reliable, but he has his convictions and has more holding him to them than most people could imagine. He takes a few steps forward, walking across the grass to where Burrito is still rubbing himself on Joey's calves. He reaches down, and his pokemon sniffs his fingers as well. His hand bumps Joey's where his friend is petting his espeon's back. 

"That's what matters, right?" Joey says. "Trying, and helping your pokemon become the best pokemon it can be." 

He kneels down, getting both hands into the petting action, and then he's looking up at AJ, completely guileless and expecting agreement as naturally as a sunflower expects the sun. Espeon chirrups, like he's giving the agreement for AJ. 

"I guess," AJ agrees. 

So much else matters, is how he always feels. There are unkind forces in the world, powers that he cannot find it in himself to ignore. He's going to take them down, one at a time, until he reaches the very end of his road. Maybe, when he gets there, the voices will let him go.

But beneath all of that, he cannot deny it – what matters to him are his pokemon, now and for always. 

"Yeah, I think you're right," he adds, with more conviction. 

Joey laughs, giving espeon a few last pets before standing up. AJ isn't expecting it, when his friend gives him a quick, tight hug. 

"I'll ring you," Joey says. "Whenever I next get the urge to battle." 

"I know," AJ agrees, smiling despite himself. Joey never fails to call. "I'll be here." 

"I knew I could count on you, when I met you," Joey says. "I knew you were in the top ten percent yourself." 

AJ laughs, suddenly enough that the sound surprises him. They are kind words, almost too kind. He doesn't have enough of his own to properly thank Joey, but he thinks his friend catches the meaning without them. 

He recalls Burrito to his pokeball at last, gives Joey a wave, and continues on his way. 

-

-


End file.
